Old Nick - Momus

Virtue’s overrated when it’s making nothing happen

At least making nothing moderately interesting happen

Will you look back from your deathbed at the things you didn’t do

Because you were too eminently sensible to?

Give in to your vices, virtue is a bore

Virtue is so passive, it lets nothing in or out

The butter that you never swallow, melting in your mouth

History hates the virtuous, Nietzsche tells us so

But adores the ones who dare to make a mess across the floor

Cultivate your vices, virtue is a bore

You must act de facto to make anybody care

Create a sticky situation and you’re halfway there

Even God agrees with me, his lowlife-loving son

Said they much prefer the sinners to the dull obedient ones

Cultivate your vices, virtue is a bore

You can be right doing nothing, but it' s like being a stopped clock

It produces more rejoicing when you’re evil then you’re not

So there’s really no excuse for not putting effort in

Get out there and, as Iggy said, find some weird sin

Cultivate your vices, virtue is a bore

Milton, when the government proposed to censor books

Said no virtue untested is ever worth two hoots

Merely testifying to a failed imagination

The feet of clay required to stay indifferent to temptation

Give in to your vices, virtue is a bore

So cultivate your vices like tiny bonsai trees

Listen to St Augustine or listen to me

But remember, I might very well be bluffing

They don’t call me Old Nick for nothing